Self-Worth

This morning started out like a typical Monday where we all struggle a little to get out of bed and get back into the routine. Sometimes I wish that weekends lingered a little longer because I absolutely love the freedom from everyday life and indulging in family time a little more. My youngest daughter came to me for help during reading time and asked me to read her The Velveteen Rabbit. I recalled picking up this copy from a secondhand store a long time ago, but the kids had not gotten around to reading it. For whatever reason, my daughter decided to choose from among the many books that sit on her bookshelf today. I don't believe it was a coincidence because I gained another understanding of self-worth this morning.

For those of you who have not read this story, it is a story of a stuffed velvet rabbit who longs to become "Real". The rabbit spends a lot of time in the nursery and feels inferior to the newer and more fun toys that are played with in the nursery. He feels very lonely and the only kind resident of the nursery is an old toy skin horse. The skin horse is described as the oldest toy in the nursery. So old "that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath", and most of the hairs in his tail were missing. "He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else...'What is REAL?' asked the rabbit one day...'Real isn't how you are made,' said the skin horse...'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real...It doesn't happen all at once...You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

We are far more than our bodies. Our self-worth isn't dependent on how we look...it goes beyond that. Stephanie Nielsen is living proof that there is beauty beyond what we see. She and her husband survived a plane crash, but sustained significant burns to their bodies. Her more than him. She struggled a lot with her situation at first, but from her trial was born an even more beautiful person with purpose and spiritual light. She is Real. I hope you too will focus more on the things that make you Real.